Nepal or Bust

Those of you who’ve known me for a good long while probably remember my love of Nepal. Not the current political disruptions, but the peasant villages, mountains, and orchard paths. For a long time, I wanted to spend a couple months from the Fall after my senior year there. The plan was to buy a ticket there, a ticket back, and have 200 bucks in my pocket for the trip. And it could be done. But, due to the circumstances of where I was at and what I needed to do to keep moving forward academically, there was simply no way to not postpone that trip.

And I do say postpone, because the intent to make that trip hasn’t passed. I haven’t thought about it in awhile, but just recently I’ve been realizing that, quite literally, everything in my life is turning out beautifully. I’m moving up to a scenic, progressive, intellectual city; I’m starting work on my doctorate in Philosophy at a school with an amazing reputation which is only continuing to move up the charts; my coursework, advisor, and TA assignment all fell perfectly into place; and, to be frank, outside of all that my heads in the right place, again. So why not make this trip?

It is something I’ve not been telling myself I need to do but have been feeling deep down that I need to do. JMD, when I was out at his cabin in Colorado, asked me why I needed to go halfway around the world when I could achieve the same level of isolation within 14 hour drive. There’s nothing mystical or special about Nepal – it’s just the place that’s calling to me. What’ll I do there? Nothing…and everything. I plan to not plan a thing, outside the aforementioned ticket there and ticket home. And given the recent resurgence of my bike riding, I see no reason why I can’t pack up my bike (and more than a few spare tubes) and send that with me. Add to that some hiking gear, a tent and pad, and the tools to cook some rice, and I’m set. Travel some, hike some, converse some, but spend a good deal about a day's ride from a village for necessities, but far enough away to be completely alone. Completely alone. Maybe I’ll take turns between sitting under a Bodhi tree and letting out a battle roar (in honor of NRZ). Whatever it is, I feel it’s important that I do this.

Naturally, I won’t be able to this coming Fall. As I mentioned in passing, I’ve got a great schedule lined up for the coming term. Add to that getting settled into Madison, acquiring a second job bartending, and finding the intriguing and eccentric med-school student to share my life with, I’ll have a pretty full plate. But after a year in the program, I might see about taking a semester off for Fall ’08. Get someone to sub-lease my apartment for the term having acquired all my inoculations, passports, and languages-learned in the semester leading up to it, and then just go. **Blink** and gone from the world of the known for a couple months. How’s that sound?

Namaste’.

Funny Quip

"So we were staying in this really old hotel in Chicago. I went into the stairwell, but it was one of those old-fashioned stairwells."

"Oh, yeah, I know what you're talking about. You mean it was one of those manually operated stairwells, right?"

I suck at being a Vegan

Labels: Vegan

After that title, you might be expecting me to expound upon the deliciousness of a freshly roasted corpse with extra au jus. But, no, not so much, no.

Na, what I mean by this is two-fold; 1) I'm not a "vegan-freak" and 2) I don't mind the by-products so much.

First, I will compromise and eat dairy and egg products when they're prepared for me. For instance, I wouldn't dream of turning down an offering from a friend. If the muffin or cookies were made with dairy products and used egg as a binding agent, that's fine by me. The benefit of allowing a gift to be given far exceeds any cost to me or the animal. Also, when I go out to eat, I find that a truly vegan meal is impossible to order except at specialty restaurants. So, if there's some cream in the pasta sauce or egg used in the tempura batter (does tempura batter have egg?), that's also fine. I wouldn't say that I'm a "convenience" vegan -- I don't simply compromise for the sake of simplicity -- I'm just an exceptionally good vegetarian who knows the practical limits of such idealism. But in my own home, of course, I only cook vegan (and you guys should really come to see me next year in Madison. Since there's very few alternatives, I've become quite practiced at cooking some amazing meals).

And about the by-products; there seems to be something akin to double-effect going on here. I abhor to the means and even the baseline idea of the meat industry, but I also respect the way Native American's used the buffalo. If the animal does die (note, I did not say if an animal "has to" die, as no animal has to die for 1st world dietary needs), every possible good should be utilized from that death. I won't support the industry, but while the industry is still steaming ahead, I see no reason not to utilize the waste products of the machine. Less waste is better, all-in-all. And what about those by-products of which I'm the cause? Click the title of this post for a good defense out of that one.

Namaste'.

Dipping into Oblivion

“Are you willing to be sponged out, erased, canceled, made nothing? Dipped into oblivion? If not, you will never really change.”
— D.H. Lawrence

Many things have changed or are in the process of changing since I last posted on DW. It's been a bit of a transitional point in my life.

Two nights ago I went out with some old friends from Ruby Tuesday's, many of whom I hadn't seen in at least 4 months, if not much more. For the first time since one of these aforementioned changes began, one of my old friends asked me about my losing weight. Truth be told, I haven't lost weight; but I have been changing my ratio of percentages of what makes up that weight. Since A-S was finally able to drag me to the rec center late this year, I've been averaging about 6 days a week working out, alternating with weights and adding a bit of cardio each day. A lot of the facts and advice I got from working out with ASH has atrophied through lack of use, but as I'm getting back into it things are starting to click again. Overall, though, I've been feeling much better. As a side note, it's now been well over 4 and a half months since I quite smoking cold turkey with not a single side-puff or cheat in the mix.

Graduation also took place a little over a week ago. I even got to wear the Masters hood, which made for a good picture with the rents. Graduations always make me fairly melancholy, which is ironic considering how many of the damn things I'll have gone to by the time I actually start my career. The cause of that sober thoughtfulness I'll leave to the reader's speculations, but it does mean I'll be transitioning to life up at Madison for the next few months. I found a great place right next to St. Mary's, stuck in between the beautiful jogging paths of both Shore Dr. of Monona Bay and the Arboretum. It's just a quick mile and a half to Campus and State St., and just 2 miles to the capital. That's easily walking distance, but even better is the plethora of bike lanes crossing all of the Central and West regions of Madison. In lieu of this potential, I took my old Trek 6000 into the shop to get tuned up to riding capacity again. There's a great cyclery shop in town who did quite a bit of maintenance for quite an affordable price. I also added on one of those back-tire racks, though I don't have any satchel bags to go with, yet. Since I got it back, I've pretty much been riding it as opposed to driving most of the time. This adds to the working out change, and at $3.50 a gallon up here, the investment I made in fixing the bike up should be pretty quick to return itself.



And, with a lack of school, I've been reading a lot of books left dormant on shelves this past year. I tend to accumulate quite a bit of amazon.com orders over the course of the year, without ever seeming to realize there's no way I'd get to read them until summer rolled around. The thing is, a lot of important aspects about life went amiss this past year: specifically, the important aspect of life, itself. I was dead wrong in my assessment of how difficult and busy an academic year this would be -- mostly self-inflicted, but damaging none-the-less. Between applications, GREs, taking on supererogatory coursework, making admissions decisions, and having a TAship from hell, I lost track of some of the old traits and practices I used to keep up with. Now, I'm looking to get back the Felix Felicis I had when I first moved up to DeKalb. Not that I'm trying to recreate the past, but the combination of practices and habits that likely resulted in the successful navigation of life two years ago are all in place again; working out regularly, eating well, reading good books voraciously, and taking time to center life again.

If you can't dance with you own devils....

I know this was a bit of a long post; just a way of updating the personal side of this blog in one (hopefully not too boring) fell swoop. I'll get back to posting more regularly now that keel is bit more even.

Namaste'.